The Upper-Class Prostitution In The Victorian Era

The start of the Industrial Revolution in the Victorian Era profoundly changed and upended the lives of many women, particularly poor women. Prostitution gained popularity among these women looking for jobs because of its high pay and non-strenuous working conditions, and for some, prostitution was the only option. However, for upper-class women already in a better life, prostitutes were everything an ideal woman should not be. Upper class women were held to certain social standards and poor women, particularly prostitutes, embodied the opposite of those standards. Upper class women's identities existed in contrast to those of poor women, with prostitutes being the extreme version of what not to be. Beauty standards and societal ideas highlighting

Firstly, they were viewed as impure. Prostitutes engaged in a job that rejects virginity and pureness, two crucial qualities of a proper Victorian woman. Prostitutes were also portrayed as people who embraced sexual desire and having sex with other men who were not their husbands. Not only did prostitutes engage with other men, as mentioned earlier, but these men would also often be the husbands of upper-class women. Since an ideal women's domestic role was to maintain a moral household, prostitutes became the ones tainting their pure households and the antagonists of upper-class women. Because of Victorian women's inferior social status, these upper-class women could not control what their husbands would do, and often they would have to watch their partners commit infidelity. Because they could not manage what these men did, they pushed the gap between themselves and prostitutes much

Because of Victorian Era's gender norms, poor women's only outlet to make enough money to support themselves and their families in a non-hazardous condition was selling themselves morally and physically. Even though these women were victims of their own communities' mistreatment, women within their gender intentionally furthered and built long-standing beauty and societal standards to bridge the gap even further between them. Prostitutes were victims of their societies but were ostracized, looked down upon, and chosen as the scapegoat for what not to become by the elite. The idea of cleanliness became embodied by members of the Victorian Era as a status symbol to differentiate themselves from prostitutes, and mainstream media promoted and advertised harmful beauty standards to help upper-class women maintain their biases and inner privilege. In a society where women are second to men, women must support each other rather than create new prejudices and distinctions between the elite and poor. Prostitutes today are in their occupation because of economic necessity caused by their society's failures. However, they still encounter the same judgment and biases from the elite that women in Victorian Era England did. We need to learn from the past and study prostitution in the Victorian Era to make sure we do not make the same mistakes in the present day, and instead